Thewlis’s Joby lacks presence. He doesn’t really follow through with the character. Joby is an administrator, an overseer of the IT talent – mainly because he burnt out as a coder when they put him on the big project. So he’s nuts, but other than being a bit nervy there’s nothing specific about his illness – which is the most developed trait of his character. It leaves one wondering why, knowing the actor has the talent to portray a character well, and express his well-drawn persona without expositional dialogue, simply by becoming that character. Why there wasn’t a finished character figured out for Thewlis to express.
Qohen is a hypochondriac and suffers severe social phobia. He doesn’t like people. A piece of his character which somewhat assassinates our feelings of sympathy, empathy, etc. is when he reveals that he used to drink, do drugs, sleep with lots of women – in short he used to be cool. This makes him more monastic than pathetic, and he’s not all that devout so the monk thing doesn’t work for him, either (it doesn’t fit with his personality; it’s not genuine.) So where does that leave Qohen, this man we are starting to care about?
He’s not that pathetic, he is abstaining by choice, so we don’t feel sorry for him. He does suffer social phobia, but when he gets set up to work from home this is no longer a problem, and he owns his own home – an old church.
He meets a girl who we don’t trust, is she on the boss’s dollar? It seems too obvious that she just happens to be throwing herself at our socially-stunted techno-monk, at a time where his performance puts him miles ahead of the curve, yet his health concerns are a concern for his bosses.
They want Qohen to be happy, not because they care, but because a happy worker is a productive worker. Qohen doesn’t feel challenged by his work. He does feel entitled to a little bending of the system, so that he can be more comfortable and get more work done.
Qohen is a hypochondriac and suffers severe social phobia. He doesn’t like people. A piece of his character which somewhat assassinates our feelings of sympathy, empathy, etc. is when he reveals that he used to drink, do drugs, sleep with lots of women – in short he used to be cool. This makes him more monastic than pathetic, and he’s not all that devout so the monk thing doesn’t work for him, either (it doesn’t fit with his personality; it’s not genuine.) So where does that leave Qohen, this man we are starting to care about?
He’s not that pathetic, he is abstaining by choice, so we don’t feel sorry for him. He does suffer social phobia, but when he gets set up to work from home this is no longer a problem, and he owns his own home – an old church.
He meets a girl who we don’t trust, is she on the boss’s dollar? It seems too obvious that she just happens to be throwing herself at our socially-stunted techno-monk, at a time where his performance puts him miles ahead of the curve, yet his health concerns are a concern for his bosses.
They want Qohen to be happy, not because they care, but because a happy worker is a productive worker. Qohen doesn’t feel challenged by his work. He does feel entitled to a little bending of the system, so that he can be more comfortable and get more work done.
So management (Matt Damon) decide to put Qohen on the big project (the one that turned Joby crazy – though Gilliam doesn’t really sell the crazy with specifics or depth.) They don’t tell Qohen what the project is, (he doesn’t care – it’s all code to him,) they just introduce him to his new system which is all designed around him, designed to support him and keep him happy and working.
Qohen’s story is fun and interesting. The world of this film is a bit less than imaginative, a little derivative. The real problem is with our protagonist – we don’t understand him. As a result we don’t care about him. If we knew from the beginning that Qohen is a guy struggling with social phobia, who used to be cool, but has given up everything fun and as a result he is a bit creepy and doesn’t know how to talk to people – this would be a start.
Qohen’s story is fun and interesting. The world of this film is a bit less than imaginative, a little derivative. The real problem is with our protagonist – we don’t understand him. As a result we don’t care about him. If we knew from the beginning that Qohen is a guy struggling with social phobia, who used to be cool, but has given up everything fun and as a result he is a bit creepy and doesn’t know how to talk to people – this would be a start.
He doesn’t like people. But you don’t forget something like that. If he used to be cool and popular as plastic and superficial as that is, then he still knows how to be. The problem with this character is that all those conflicts and confusions are an interesting setup for a character. Finding answers to those questions, or figuring out where those arguments and puzzles lead would make for an interesting part of the story and a fully deep character. However, instead it's all setup, no payoff.
The nice thing is the twist at the end, this with better characters could have been a really deep, personal and interesting ending. However, instead, it simply feels like Qohen made a bad choice and it’s a tragic romance – but it wasn’t supposed to be.
The ending is horrible because the character is only half-developed. Everything is a weight resting on the shoulders of Qohen – Waltz plays silly rather than sincere, and instead of performing this character – he talks about himself. As much fun as monologues can be, this is a semi-written, badly performed monologue which hides expositional dialogue and pretends to be a scifi/fantasy film.
2 stars
The most annoying factor of this film, besides half-drawn characters is that this giant philosophical rant that the film is supposed to be about is scripted into boring, irrelevant, expositional dialogue.
The nice thing is the twist at the end, this with better characters could have been a really deep, personal and interesting ending. However, instead, it simply feels like Qohen made a bad choice and it’s a tragic romance – but it wasn’t supposed to be.
2 stars
